Pokedex: An Anthology
by zelcore
Summary: A collection of scientific papers detailing different aspects of the pokemon world. Subjects range from pokemon physiology including studying the anatomic structures, habitats, behaviors and interactions of various species; to poke-technology from how a pokeball works to how the pc transfer system was created; to many other fields. A companion piece to Trials of a Trainer
1. Ekans

**A/N: This is intended as a companion piece to my main story Trials of a Trainer, where at the conclusion of each chapter I include a pokedex excerpt. This is where I will deposit the remainder of that excerpt. **

**I've tried to write these in such a way so that they are similar to a scientific paper. They've also been written with the help of the /r/Pokemon_University subreddit community which is where the idea originally came from. **

**Finally, the pokedex entries detailing species will include their evolutionary families as a whole. I'll post them as they come up in my story. I'll probably try and post these once a week. The entries will primarily be pokedex entries about species, but I do have other papers that I will eventually post as well. **

**If you like the more realistic take on the pokemon check out my story Trials of a Trainer.**

The Ekans Evolutionary Line

Ekans and their evolved form arbok are poisonous snake pokemon that are native to the Kanto region. Their cousin species, seviper are native to Hoenn.

Ekans have a very temperamental hatching period. From the point that the eggs are laid until the point they hatch their mother is constantly coiled up on top of them. The constant need for the mother's attention is because they need her body for heat and also they need the poison that is leached out of her body.

An ekans egg is very thin and extremely sensitive to changes in pH. If the pH of the egg shell drops below a certain acidic point the baby ekans dies. This is because their blood naturally has a low viscosity rate by itself and the acidic helps to keep it flowing in the body.

When handling an ekans egg it is vitally important that gloves are worn that have a completely neutral balanced pH so as to not affect the acidity of the egg shell and the ekans inside.

Ekans produce their poison from two small poison sacs located just below the base of their head. In baby ekans however these sacs are so small they do not produce enough poison to help move blood throughout their body so they absorb poison from their mother as she constantly lays across their eggs.

As the ekans grows it retains all of the poison it gains from both its sacs and its mother. The gestation period within the egg depends on the acidity of the mother's poison and how fast it is leached from her to the eggs.

On account of how much poison is lost to the eggs, most of these pokemon do not reproduce until they have evolved into arbok. Over eighty percent of ekans that reproduce die during the hatching of eggs because of a combination of their poison being completely leached from their system and they starve to death because it takes too long for their eggs to hatch.

Once the ekans has grown large enough to survive outside the egg, and its poison sacs have grown large enough to produce enough poison to keep its blood moving, it releases a hormone that tells its poison sacs and blood to excrete roughly ninety percent of its collected poison out of its pores. This literally melts the egg around it and scars the mother's underbelly where she was laying on top of the eggs. One can tell how many clutches of eggs the mother has laid by how many scars she has on her underbelly.

Within hours of hatching the baby ekans slither away into the grass. The hungry baby snakes immediately begin to search for food following purely on instinct. The snakes begin to search out for small pokemon like baby pidgey and tiny rattata. The snakes will even feed on caterpie if they are hungry enough.

When the snakes are roughly a month old they undergo their first skin shedding, it is also around this time that their poison sacs have completely replenished their poison they lost while hatching from their egg. As an ekans the snake will never regain the amount of poison or be that acidic that it was in the moment of hatching. As an arbok they will far surpass it.

With the snake's replenished poison it can now go after larger prey like mankey, furret, and meowth. The ekans only needs to get a good bite on it's prey to inject it with poison and then wait for it to take effect. The poison acts as a paralyzing agent and stiffens their body. It also begins to isolate certain enzymes and hormones within its prey. The ekans than will unhinge its jaw and slowly eat the paralyzed and still alive pokemon. Depending on how large the pokemon is, the snake will not have to eat for anywhere up to a week to a month.

During digestion, the specific cells within the bloodstream will capture the particles that the poison within the body has been collecting from specific hormones and enzymes. These special cells will carry them to the poison sacs where they are used to generate more poison and help the poison sacs to grow.

As the poison sacs grow, they begin to balloon out in the neck and eventually flatten out to form a hood. This process is the ekans gradually evolving into an arbok. The prolonged contact with the poison sacs, combined with the stretching out of the skin and scales within the neck has caused the pigmentation to fade into a light translucent purple color. The translucency allows for poison sacs' reactions to be visible which give a unique design on the pokemon's hood. No two arbok are alike, they all have different designs on their hoods as their poisons all have different levels of acidity, their poison sacs themselves are all different sizes and they are all reacting differently.

When the time for mating comes along the female arbok, and in some rare cases ekans, will let off a pheromone which will draw in any nearby male arbok and ekans that are sexually mature.

The female will lay completely flat across the ground and all of the males will gather and coil around her all secreting their own specific kind of poison completely coating the female in it. The female will then mate with the male that has the most potent poison.

The mating process begins by the female and the selected male coil completely around each other from head to tail. The pheromone that the female released triggered the male's reproductive organs to begin mixing sperm into the male's male will than bite and inject his poison into each of the female's poison sacs. The male's sperm within the injected poison than race through the female's poison sac until they come into contact with the female's eggs that were released when she started releasing the pheromone.

The fertilized eggs will then slowly make their way down through the female's body where she will lay the eggs and stay with them until they hatch.

The male, with his job complete will slither away in hope of catching another female releasing her pheromones.

In some cases the female's fertilized eggs get stuck in the process of traveling down her body and they begin to develop within her poison sacs. This is easy to spot as there are several giant bulges within the arbok's head. If this occurs to an ekans their poison sacs will likely burst and kill both mother and children because there is not enough room for them to all expand. When this does occur the eggs will develop much faster because they are being constantly exposed to the mother's organ that produces the poison. When the eggs are ready to hatch and release all of their poison they will burn themselves out of the mother's poison sacs and skin itself. The mother slowly dies as her children slither away without working poison sacs to help keep her blood for clotting up.

The most famous arbok is former Grand Champion Aconite's one-of-a-kind two-headed serpent Doku-Mushi. They were nearly indistinguishable from one another until in an exhibition match Mushi's hood was nearly severed causing it's now famous scar. Each snake independently controls their own head and the two share one nervous system. They cooperatively control the length of their body beyond the joint of the neck where their heads join. The snake not only holds the record for longest living arbok and most venoms, but also held the record for length until she sired Ira, the arbok that was gifted to Aconite's grandson.

**A/N: If you liked the more realistic take on the pokemon check out my story Trials of a Trainer. **

**What did you guys think? **


	2. Aerodactyl

**A/N: Here's the full version of the Aerodactyl Entry. Enjoy!**

**If you like the more realistic take on the pokemon world, check out my main fic Trials of a Trainer**

The aerodactyl, also known as the ancient king of the dragons is a member of the fossil pokemon family.

Fossil pokemon are pokemon that believed to have gone extinct, both in our world and in the world that pokemon originated from. It is believed that their fossils appeared due to brink portals opening literally within the earth and expelling contents from the pokemon's original world. As such they are extremely rare, and highly sought after by collectors.

There is an emerging theory that fossil pokemon were not always partially rock types. It is believed that the development of the secondary typing is a leftover artifact from the resurrection process. As such, it is believed that aerodactyl was originally a dragon/flying type and only developed the rock typing following it being brought back to life.

The aerodactyl is characterized by its purple and gray colored leathery hide, believed to be the precursor to the modern dragon's tough scales. It has no arms, instead two hands at the joints in its lengthy wings ending in a single finger-like claw on the tip. To make up for its lack of arms it has overly-large talon like feet that are a quarter long as it is tall. The pokemon's wings are made of the same leathery-hide that covers its body although it is stretched so it is an incredibly thin and membrane like. It has ridged beak-like snout very similar to bird pokémon except for the fact that it is filled with razor sharp, serrated fangs.

Fossil pokemon are able to be resurrected using a complex process known as revitalization. It first involves taking an extremely well preserved sample of its genetic code from the fossil, destroying it in the process. Only genetic code samples that are more than 95 percent intact can be used. The genetic code's holes are then filled in with splices from the ancient ancestor's closest modern descendent. The genetic code is then cloned and grown in test tubes into pokemon near exact copies of their ancient brethren. The genetic code itself however is very unstable and can only be replicated a few times before it becomes completely unusable.

Fossil locations have suggested that the ancient dragon's habitat is high up in mountain ranges. This is believed to be so that the aerodactyl cannot be as easily dive-bombed on by other large flying pokemon due to their fragile wings. Egg fossils have been found in areas with multiple nests in close proximity. It has been suggested that ancient aerodactyl lived in packs. This is further supported by the fact that the found nests are made of large boulders that would be too large for a single or even a pair of aerodactyl to move by themselves.

Aerodactyl's are primarily carnivores and were thought to be one of the apex predators of the ancient world. Its membrane-like wings are unlike any other modern dragon pokemon's wings in the world. The ancient dragon's thin wings lends itself perfectly to high speed diving allowing for very little air resistance. As such it was theorized, and then proven correct when the pokemon was resurrected, that the dragon hunts by dive bombing its prey and grabbing them at such high speeds that it breaks their necks. It has also been observed that the purple dragon likes to play with its food by taking its prey to extremely high altitudes and dropping it out of the air. It then catches the prey before it lands on the ground, breaking its neck in the process as well.

The aerodactyl is also a ferocious ground fighter where it prefers to take out its enemies as fast as possible by ripping out their throats with its sharp beak-like snout and serrated teeth.

It has been discovered that the dragon enjoys consuming fruit, although this is a fruit that is found only on trees grown in high mountain ranges.

Another theory that has recently been announced is that the ancient dragon was thought to have also been part poison type. This is because of the pokémon's purple pigmentation which usually is only found in poison type pokémon. The dragon's uniquely shaped fangs also are formed in such a way that suggests they were used to inject venom.

Much is unknown of the ancient dragon, including their mating rituals and how they reproduced. However those discoveries may not be remained hidden for much longer.

The archaeology world was shocked to recently discover that a small family of aerodactyl was found living in the upper reaches of the mountains within Kanto and Johto. It has not been announced which exact mountain chain has the ancient purple family so as to prevent trainers risking their lives to try and catch the dragon, destroying their natural habitat, and killing any of the dragons whether it be on accident or for sport.

Study of the family is being conducted slowly and cautiously so as to avoid human influence as this is the first time the ancient pokemon has been seen in the wild.

It is unclear however whether or not the family of aerodactyl are surviving members of the ancient world that came through the brink, or an accidental release when the revitalization process was in its infancy.

**A/N: ****If you like the more realistic take on the pokemon world, check out my main fic Trials of a Trainer****.**

**What did you guys think? I'm going to try and get on a more regular schedule for updating and update both the Anthology and Trials of a Trainer each once a week. **


End file.
